Jury acquits ex-CIA agent

Cuban man was accused of perjury

by Will Weissert - Apr. 9, 2011 12:00 AMAssociated Press

EL PASO - An elderly Cuban former CIA operative accused of lying during a U.S. immigration hearing was acquitted on all charges Friday, with jurors taking just three hours to reach a verdict after 13 weeks of often-delayed testimony.

Luis Posada Carriles, 83, broke out in a huge grin when the verdict was read and hugged all three of his attorneys simultaneously. One of the attorneys broke down in tears.

Across the aisle, the federal prosecutors who painstakingly built their case during the first 11 weeks by calling 23 witnesses, sat still.

"Anytime a jury has a case, there's no telling what they might do. But we respect the jury's decision," Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Reardon said after the hearing.

Posada, who spent decades working to destabilize communist Latin American governments, often with Washington's backing, is Public Enemy No. 1 in his homeland and is considered ex-President Fidel Castro's nemesis.

Prosecutors said Posada lied to immigration officials about how he sneaked into the U.S. in 2005 and by denying he masterminded a series of hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded 12 other people.

Posada said in a 1998 interview with the New York Times that he planned the attacks but later recanted that.

The defense, which called just eight witnesses over eight days, maintained Posada should have been allowed to retire a hero in Miami for his service to the country during the darkest days of the cold war. Posada spent nearly two years in immigration detention centers but was released in 2007 and had been living in Miami.

Posada participated in the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion, served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and was a CIA operative until 1976. He then moved to Venezuela and served as head of that country's intelligence service. Also in 1976, he was arrested and accused of planning the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Posada was acquitted by a military tribunal but escaped from prison while still facing a civilian trial.

He helped the U.S. funnel support to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s and, in 2000, was arrested in Panama amid a plot to kill Castro during a summit there. He was pardoned by Panama's president in 2004 and turned up in the U.S. the following March.